The ‘It’ Movie’s Runtime Is Way Longer Than ‘The Dark Tower’

Something fishy is going on with the two Stephen King movies coming out this year. At least, their runtimes aren’t exactly what you’d expect. It was recently revealed that The Dark Tower clocks in at a lean 95 minutes long, and now we’re hearing that Andres Muschietti’sIt is considerably longer than two hours: approximately 135 minutes.

The British Board of Film Classification lists It as fifteen minutes over two hours, which is pretty long for a horror movie. Usually directors like to give the audience a rest after around 90 minutes or so, but, then again, It does have a lot of ground to cover. There’s 1,138 pages of terror within the book’s bindings, a lot of which is some really intense lore and worldbuilding to set up the character of Pennywise and why, exactly, it enjoys hunting down small children.

This runtime comparison may seem a little strange when you take into account that The Dark Tower series in its entirety is 4,250 pages, but the upcoming movie was made as a potential (and hopeful) franchise-starter — more of an introduction into the world than an immersion in it, which is what It seems to be going for.

We’re getting two King adaptations in the same year, within a month of each other, that are wildly different stories, tones, and lengths. It’ll be interesting to see which one of them works the best.

The Dark Tower hits theaters August 4. It follows closely behind on September 8.